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New Way to Clean Oil Spills with Magnetism

by new.com

​Scientists working to up clean oil spills have found a chemical emulsifier agent that allows mixtures of oil and sea water to be separated to remove the oil using a magnetic field.

Most of the oil-spill cleanup technology employed by government agencies, the oil producing companies and private ecologically-centered firms these days is focused on a variety of mechanical solutions like high-tech filter machines that attempt to remove the oil from the water. Needless to say, following disasters like the Deep Horizon spill of the coast of Louisiana that recently fouled most of that state’s coastline with oil and muck, many different teams of researchers from many different fields of science are working on new and more effective ways to separate oil and water, and ultimately remove the oil. Now, one enterprising group of scientists has decided to focus their oil-cleanup efforts on good, old-fashioned chemistry to get the job done.

However, instead of using chemicals alone to attempt to separate the oil from the water, this new method uses a brand-new custom blend of chemical emulsifier agents built in the laboratory that are aimed at mixing the oil and water together. The real trick behind the emulsification agent method is that this particularly chemical mix responds to magnetism. The emulsification molecules that researchers are using are called magnetic surfactants (surface-active agents), and they can coat the oil that is contained in a mixture of oil and water. The mixture is charged and hydrophilic poles at the end of the surfactants will protrude from the water and attach themselves to the oil and the combination of oil and water can then be manipulated (or separated) by the magnets. In what appears to be almost a magical reaction, any mixture of oil, water and the emulsifying chemical can be separated from the oil using a magnetic field. The new emulsification technology is only in its infancy at the moment, and you’re unlikely to see it for sale to consumers any time soon, if ever, but the technical applications have shown great commercial-use promise already and even medical researchers are looking at it for several different possible medical uses in the future.

Although this new technology using magnetic charges to separate and remove oil from water is viewed quite optimistically by most environmentally-conscious scientists, however some are saying it could be a waste of time to develop this technology specifically for the cleaning of waster based oil spills as several companies have already developed mechanical separators that can remove thousands of gallons of oil per minute from seawater using mechanical wheels and scrapers powered by electric motors. The detractors claim that putting more chemicals in the water to clean up oil could do more harm than good, and also point out that cleaning up every drop of oil is futile in itself as the ocean floor is already continually seeping oil without any help or harm from manmade sources.

They point to the fact that the sea bed is leaking oil is a by-product of the natural activity of the earth and “natural” oil leaks will continue to be produced as long as there is hydrogen and carbon in the earth's core.. Natural oil leaks come from miles under the surface, and must pass through miles of non-porous layers before it can rise to the top of the water. The only good news in this natural equation is that the earth's natural ecosystem has also produced types of bacteria that can actually “eat” the oils. While it is true that the sea bed does have natural oil leaks, unlike the man-made leaks, the spill-caused leaks do not spread to cover thousands of square miles like the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blow-out has done. It is good news that the new emulsification/magnetic method shows definite promise in cleaning up man-made oil spills and leaks. Just how effective the method will eventually turn out to be is the only question that remains to be answered.